Besides Homecoming weekend’s annual musical, parade, breakfasts and football game, ACU also hosts hundreds of alumni.

It’s one of the best weekends of the year: the singing in Chapel is louder, teachers dismiss classes earlier, there’s purple everywhere and, best of all, the Bean food is better.

But what makes Homecoming so special is its reminder of what ACU is and was to so many people.

Alumni bring with them countless memories and stay up later than a pre-med major the night before midterms to relive and retell stories from ACU.

Personally, my favorite part is the football game: hundreds of face-painted fans in purple garb pretending to know all the words to the Alma Mater when the only part that matters is yelling “Three cheers for the purple and white!”

It’s at that moment, holding up the “WC” and swaying back and forth cheering for the Wildcats, that ACU is truly your home.

For this one weekend during the fall semester we bleed purple and white, and then we repeat it all over again for Sing Song in the spring.

How often do you see such a display of school spirit? The rest of the year we’re so caught up studying, working or playing the newest video game that we often don’t really appreciate what we have.

We spend so much time complaining about the little things in college that we fail to grasp how lucky we truly are. Sure, Chapel can be a nuisance sometimes, but year after year alumni insist one of the things they miss most is daily, mandatory Chapel.

We complain about how boring Abilene can be, but we have a place here at ACU where we can be ourselves, a place that encourages us to get out and create memories that we’ll hold on to forever.

So I’m thankful for events like Homecoming and Sing Song. Without them to remind us of the great things we have here at ACU, we would get caught up in the monotony of the daily grind. I’m going to go to many of the Homecoming festivities – and when this weekend is over, I’ll keep on having a fantastic time.

Memories are precious, but I don’t want to wait until they’re memories to appreciate them.